in search of a place more suitable than St Croix for the
establishment of his colony, On June 18, with a party
which included twenty sailors and several gentlemen, he
and Champlain began a fresh voyage to the south-west.
Their destination was the country of the Armouchiquois,
an Algonquin tribe who then inhabited Massachusetts.

Champlain's story of his first voyage from Acadia to Cape
Cod is given with considerable fulness. The topography
of the seaboard and its natural history, the habits of
the Indians and his adventures with them, were all new
subjects at the time, and he treats them so that they
keep their freshness. He is at no pains to conceal his
low opinion of the coast savages. Concerning the Acadian
Micmacs he says little, but what he does say is chiefly
a comment upon the wretchedness of their life during the
winter. As he went farther south he found an improvement
in the food supply. At the mouth of the Saco he and De
Monts saw well-kept patches of Indian corn three feet
high, although it was not yet midsummer. Growing with
the corn were beans, pumpkins, and squashes, all in
flower; and the cultivation of tobacco is also noted.
Here the savages formed a permanent settlement and lived
within a palisade. Still farther south, in the neighbourhood
of Cape Cod, Champlain found maize five and a half feet
high, a considerable variety of squashes, tobacco, and
edible roots which tasted like artichokes.

But whether the coast Indians were Micmacs or Armouchiquois,
whether they were starving or well fed, Champlain tells